Day one of the 30 in 13 Art Challenge and I’ve decided to draw a viking warrior in cold weather gear standing over a fallen foe? or perhaps friend? how knows! There are a few insets of details I was trying to get better/right. Might take it into PS to color it maybe I wont. not sure yet. Based off a character from Top of the Lake. Although this version looks far too old. shooting for 25-30. Viking is a hard knock life I guess!
September  2013 is the month I habitualize art. That is what 30 in 13 is all about. I know a lot of people that are compulsive creators. They can’t stay still. Their hands and eyes and minds are always moving always thinking about what to make next. I am not one of those people. In fact. I am very much the opposite. I am a master at sitting still, in one place for a REALLY long time. Don’t believe me? I have the Deep Vein Thrombosis to prove it! but that is another story all together.
30 in 13 is about getting back to a time when I made art as a matter of habit. I remember a time when I would always have a little flip pad and pen on me and in any down time, especially at work, I would draw a little picture of this or that. Doodles or characters or objects, whatever came to mind. Those days are long past but really shouldn’t be. I spend WAY too much time doing stupid stuff trying to engage my brain in some for of escapism fantasy, and to a certain extent that is alright BUT it is the slowest dumbest most unrewarding form of escapism there is: watching TV. I’ll throw playing video games in their too. It pains me to say it but those two things have really messed my life up, in a work ethic sort of way and a good health sort of way.
Creating is not a default mode for most people. We are trained from a young age to sit/stand and wait and be quiet and be patient. Why? That seems like a huge waist of time to me. If you have any ‘free’ time you should engage in creation. Open that notebook/sketchpad/iPad/Nook or even cell phone and instead of waiting or busying yourself with some piece of meaningless fluff (TV or People magazine) spend that in between time creating something; pictures, words, music, whatever. Engage your environment and your mind in a new, better way. Observe. Record. Create.
Please join me in September and create! Create! Create!
There is a lot that goes into moving from one house to another, even more if its in another city and more still if its in another state. Thats what we’ve done. I left a job, friends, home I owned (co-owned) and a city I had gotten to know pretty well, and now find myself a stranger in a strange land. I suppose my family does, its not just me. We all are outsiders in this place, but my wife has it a bit easier as she has a job, the reason for the move, so she has colleagues that she can at least talk with. I don’t. My attempts to find employment have’t gone well.
I should clarify, the one job I applied to, I got a phone interview and then a face to face with four managers. The phone interview I thought I did really well in so I wasn’t surprised that I moved forward. The face to face, I was tired, nervous and unfocused and bombed pretty bad. The experience is quickly becoming one of those moments when you feel awkward or embarrassed flashes into your mind, as a mnemonic precursor to the actual real time event.
I keep looking back at it and thinking how could I have done that? How could I be so amateurish? What am I even doing in this career? Thats another aspect to this, do i even want to remain a designer. Employers are looking for people with a passion for their work. I can’t say for sure if thats me. Am I passionate about things? Yes. For sure. Are they design? In some aspects yes but mostly not. When I answer the question: If you could do anything what would it be? or Whats your dream job. All my answers are art related or encompass making some form of art, and design is surely a part of those endeavors, but do I want to wake up and make  pamphlets all day? Or kern text or make endless iterations of the same thing? No, certainly not. Then again all aspects of working even in a dream job, aren’t all perfect. Theres plenty of mundane rig-a-ma-roll that goes into dream jobs too.
Another culprit in the bad interview is a healthy dose of self sabotage. Thats right, I did it all to myself on purpose. Well, maybe…subconsciously. There could be self sabotage of having to perform again, make things beautiful. Doing that sometimes makes me feel like someones yelling “Dance Monkey! Dance!” There could be over zealous Mr. Mom going on. Wanting to stay home with your kids can be a very compelling. I really enjoy spending time with my kid and I’m really in no hurry to get back to work. I’ll only have so much time with him. I’m especially conscious of it given my medical history. I’m not exactly expecting to live till I’m 80.
What should I do. Is there a solution or compromise that I can find? Just to keep applying and trying to find the right job that would allow me to balance work, dreams and fatherhood. Does it actually exist? That waits to be seen.
I was trying to express how hard it is to translate an old dream into reality to my friend Max the other day. When you’ve sat and dreamed about something for so long it starts to pick up tons of bits from your life and how you were feeling at the time and it gets globed on to the dream. It changes slightly to fit into your state of made, or the need at hand. What you end up with, instead of a clear picture, is a muddled one. Using a photograph metaphor, instead of a crisp snapshot, its multi-exposures layered on top of each other, until the original subject becomes unrecognizable or in the least, obscured.
Thats kind of where I am with MMF. Its really diificult. Like jsut drawing him out. Sometimes he has paws, sometimes hands, sometimes hes super fat sometimes really long and skinny. I have a tendency to be over literal with these things. I’m trying to accept the mutability of the subject matter and just go with it. Its very likely the end user wont ever notice. Its the Designer Brain trying to make things as perfect and “correct” as possible.
In the end it just becomes obstacle that keeps me from moving forward on the project. I am 100% committed to getting it done, so I’m done doing that.
The next step is to go through and block out sequences. Roughs, nothing fancy. just so I can see and have it in there! Get it out of my head and onto the page, or screen, or whatever.
Here goes.
I am nearing completion of my projects. Senior Thesis is down. Figure drawing is very close and Animation just around the corner. So then where does this leave this blog? It would leave it in a strange Limbo but I’d like to keep using it. There are a lot of changes coming in the next year. During that time I would like to really stretch and expand my knowledge of both design and illustration. Meaning more side projects and development of my existing skill sets. I’ll be posting those projects here as they come. I may modify some sections, like Blood Clots. Hopefully those wont be an issue any more as March 28 denotes one year since diagnosis and treatment should be done by then, and when I say done I mean DONE.
We also have a big deal happening around August 24th. That marks the expected delivery date of our first baby! HOORAY! So things will change. This has been a big adjustment for me and I’m sure there will be even more adjusting, but I’m looking forward to it. It also has been a big motivator. What do I want this child to know about me? That I’m a floater? Just going through the paces? or that I’m a designer? A damn good one. That am an Illustrator? A great one. So those are the things I’m going to be working on, both in skill and scholastically. I’ve been very critical of the educational institute I’ve attended and there is more and more research showing that I’m more right than I’m wrong. There’s the saying you get what you want out of college (and life for that matter), so I’m charting my goals and working towards them, to be a better design in both skill and thought.
I realize that so much of what I’ve done in the last few years hasn’t been motivated by good/positive things, so I’m really trying to let the good things in my life (my job, friends, family, wife and child) become the focus of what I do. Here is to positive and new directions!
I’ve been working on my portfolio site and it can be found here:
http://portfolio.mythdrivinglegend.com/
This is built on a WordPress backbone and uses fancy pants theme named Locus. Its actually straight forward and simple (looking). On the back end its a bit nightmarish. Adding things to the gallery section is a chore and I haven’t got all my pieces in place yet. It is kind of nice how it handles animations, i have one in there now, its missing its thumbnail, but I like how its able to display them.
I’m not a huge fan of the Lightbox style, the styling elements on the image when it pops up. I’d also like it if one were able to just click a ‘next’ button or arrow to move from one piece to the next. The theme supports multiple image per gallery item, but not really that gallery item to item navigation as far as I can see, but its worth looking into.
I put together two boxes for toys. A box for a Moon Mission Filfy action figure and one for Lord Emperor Gurken.
I cooked up three different DVD Cover labels.
I put together a Blue-Ray DVD cover for a theorized Season 1 on Moon Mission Filfy. The BG colors are punched up a bunch.
The pulp cover is in the final stages and the part of the project where you think to yourself, wow Im nearly done and then you spend forever tweaking things and upgrading things you already did. Always trying to make good, better and better, the best. Lots of time gets spent in this finishing stage. Perhaps thats the difference between an novice and expert or perhaps being more intuitive vs rigid planning? regardless, this is what I have at this point. One with an aging effect, as if you opened some old boxes in your dads attic or basement and discovered a gem from years gone by, and one without, so you can see the difference. (OK EDIT! posted the final, version, some of the masthead graphic placement wasnt exactly what I need so some mine tweaks!)
